There have been a lot of changes to language on the Internet in Stallman's time. Stuff that was cool just a year ago marks you as an undesirable now. "Micro$oft" used to be perfectly socially acceptable on USENET. I wonder who they paid to get that changed?
The level of discourse was raised, MS didn't pay anyone.
Uh, I would beg to differ. It's stayed about the same, but there's more a lot more hate motivating everything. Back in 1989, there was still such a thing as civil discourse. Now disingenuously veiled hate speech is the norm, with the noise being louder the more important the issue is to society.
If discourse is the lifeblood of our body politic, our body politic is an undead zombie.
Sorry. It's just depressing out there.
(It used to be that Micro$oft was just a joke. It wasn't until well after HN that it somehow became "offensive.")
people who say "Micro$oft" are idiots. the existence of people who are humorless and lame enough to say it in the year 2013 -- that's what's offensive. it's not that people give a shit about microsoft or whatever
This sentence contradicts itself through its sheer uninspired humorlessness.
Then again, you find "Micro$oft" funny, so what do you know?
Microsoft was not that threatening anymore, people moved on, and you can only keep the same BS juvenile joke for so long.
M$ == "oh, Microsoft cares about money. A company of all things! How funny".
The idea that they paid someone (who, the ...USENET owner?) to have M$ not be that acceptable on USENET is beyond ludicrous.
Not to mention it's BS. People still use M$ and Micro$oft all the time, even in USENET (well, they don't use USENET that much, that's true). It's just that people that are 16-22 yo OSS "fans" rooting for the "Linux conquest of the desktop" are less abundant now.